Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Behavioral/Cognitive
Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis and 2Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital, 48149 Munster, Germany, 3Otto Creutzfeldt Center
for Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience, 48149 Munster, Germany, 4Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, 04103 Leipzig,
Germany, 5Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat, 48149 Munster, Germany, and 6Center of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, 48149 Munster, Germany
Diffusion tensor imaging revealed that trait anxiety predicts the microstructural properties of a prespecified fiber tract between the
amygdala and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex. Besides this particular pathway, it is likely that other pathways are also affected.
We investigated white matter differences in persons featuring an anxious or a nonanxious personality, taking into account all potential
pathway connections between amygdala and anxiety-related regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Diffusion-weighted images, measures
of trait anxiety and of reappraisal use (an effective emotion-regulation style), were collected in 48 females. With probabilistic tractography, pathways between the amygdala and the dorsolateral PFC, dorsomedial PFC, ventromedial PFC, and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) were
delineated. The resulting network showed a direct ventral connection between amygdala and PFC and a second limbic connection
following the fornix and the anterior limb of the internal capsule. Reappraisal use predicted the microstructure of pathways to all
calculated PFC regions in the left hemisphere, indicating stronger pathways for persons with high reappraisal use. Trait anxiety predicted
the microstructure in pathways to the ventromedial PFC and OFC, indexing weaker connections in trait-anxious persons. These effects
appeared in the right hemisphere, supporting lateralization and top-down inhibition theories of emotion processing. Whereas a specific
microstructure is associated with an anxious personality, a different structure subserves emotion regulation. Both are part of a broad
fiber tract network between amygdala and PFC.
Key words: amygdala; DTI; PFC; reappraisal use; top-down inhibition; trait anxiety
Introduction
The interplay between amygdala and prefrontal cortex (PFC) is
central to the regulation of emotions. Crucial components of this
interplay are top-down inhibition processes manifesting themselves in downregulation of the amygdala by medial PFC (mPFC;
Bishop, 2007). A greater functional connectivity between the
amygdala and the mPFC was reported in persons with low anxiety (Pezawas et al., 2005). Investigating fiber connections in white
matter, Kim and Whalen (2009) applied diffusion tensor imaging
(DTI) and found that trait anxiety, a stable tendency to respond
with anxiety, predicted the microstructure of a ventral amygdala
PFC pathway. Persons high in trait anxiety showed lower values
of fractional anisotropy (FA; Basser and Pierpaoli, 1996) on this
Received July 26, 2014; revised Jan. 31, 2015; accepted Feb. 3, 2015.
Author contributions: A.S.E., K.K., I.L., Pe.Z., Pi.Z., and C.D. designed research; A.S.E. and H.K. performed research;
J.S., A.A., H.K., and C.D. contributed unpublished reagents/analytic tools; A.S.E., J.S., and A.A. analyzed data; A.S.E.,
J.S., A.A., K.K., I.L., Pe.Z., Pi.Z., H.K., and C.D. wrote the paper.
This work was supported by the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research (Grant Do3/021/10).
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Correspondence should be addressed to Annuschka Salima Eden, Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis, Malmedyweg 15, 48143 Munster, Germany. E-mail: Annuschka.Eden@uni-muenster.de.
DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3659-14.2015
Copyright 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/356020-08$15.00/0
tract to the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, i.e., weaker connections. It is likely that a larger network of amygdalaPFC connections is affected in trait anxiety (for review, see Ray and Zald,
2012). Data by Kim and Whalen (2009) support the idea that
anxiety is associated with ineffective top-down inhibition. These
dysfunctional processes might be attributable to an attenuated
use of reappraisal, a coping strategy involving reinterpretation of
the emotional meaning of stimuli. Low reappraisal results in low
activity in PFC regions and in high amygdala activity (Ochsner et
al., 2002, 2004; Kim and Hamann, 2007). In women, the microstructural foundation for this interplay is related to the integrity
of white matter pathways between amygdala and PFC (Zuurbier
et al., 2013).
Anatomical knowledge about amygdalaPFC connections
mostly derives from primates. Because of close cytoarchitectural
homology between primates and humans (Petrides and Mackey,
2006; Jbabdi et al., 2013), a transfer of findings seems reasonable
but awaits further support. The mPFC and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) receive direct input from the amygdala (for an overview, see Barbas and Zikopoulos, 2006), whereas the lateral PFC
receives less, and mostly indirect, input via the cingulate or posterior OFC (Ray and Zald, 2012). Studies investigating amygdalaPFC connections in relation to anxiety have mostly focused on
Table 1. Means and SDs of demographic, behavioral, and fractional anisotropy (in target regions) data, separately for both anxiety groups
FA
Trait anxiety group Trait anxiety score Reappraisal score Age
Years of schooling IQ
Low
27.08 2.43
27.75 6.03
25.38 3.67 13 0
High
57.58 4.65
23.04 6.52
26.92 5.99 13 0
OFC
vmPFC
dmPFC
dlPFC
L: 0.544 0.015
R: 0.541 0.014
L: 0.488 0.152
R: 0.531 0.013
L: 0.553 0.015
R: 0.554 0.012
L: 0.505 0.157
R: 0.519 0.112
L: 0.545 0.019
R: 0.541 0.012
L: 0.471 0.183
R: 0.508 0.111
Procedure
To control for intelligence differences between groups, the Wechsler
Adult Intelligence Scale (German version of the WAIS-III; Von Aster et
al., 2006) was administered individually to every subject 2 d before image
acquisition. No significant differences were found between the HA and
LA groups (HA: mean, 107.00; SD, 25.11; LA: mean, 115.17; SD, 13.06;
T 1.414, p 0.164). Participants completed the German version of the
Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross and John, 2003), which measures reappraisal use. The two groups displayed significant differences in
reappraisal use (HA: mean, 23.04; SD, 6.52; LA: mean, 27.75; SD, 6.03;
T 2.598, p 0.013; see Table 1 for means separated by group).
Image acquisition
Participants were instructed to lie still and stay awake throughout the
entire scanning procedure. Diffusion MRI (dMRI) and structural T1weighted images were acquired on a 3T MR scanner (Intera 3.0T; Philips
Medical Systems), with an inner bore diameter of 60 cm, equipped with
dMRI preprocessing
Before data processing, dMRI volumes that were corrupted by movement of the participants were removed from the datasets. First, an automatic method was used to remove volumes of low quality. The algorithm
is based on the fact that motion eliminates the signal in a slice when
motion occurs during its acquisition. Usually, the average voxel intensity
of two consecutive slices does not change much. Only when motion
extinguishes the signal in parts of a slice does its average voxel intensity
differ greatly from its neighbors and indicate corruption of the volume.
In a following control step, visual inspection of the datasets ensured the
satisfactory quality of the remaining data. The cleaned dMRIs were interpolated to 1 mm isotropic resolution, aligned with the MNI template,
and corrected for motion and eddy-current effects in one step with a
single interpolation. The diffusion tensor and the FA maps were computed by use of the FSL software package (http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.
uk/fsl/fsl-4.1.9; Smith et al., 2004; Woolrich et al., 2009; Jenkinson et al.,
2012).
Amygdalaprefrontal pathways
The individual connectivity maps for each prefrontal connection were
normalized with the transformation obtained from the atlas registration,
averaged across participants, and thresholded at the target-specific level.
The anatomical locations of the fiber pathways were evaluated based on
the anatomical slices and a 3D volume rendering using the LIPSIA software (Lohmann et al., 2001).
Statistical analysis
To test the influence of trait anxiety and reappraisal use on the pathway
strength between amygdala (seed) and PFC regions (targets), multiple
hierarchical regressions were calculated individually for both hemispheres, with the factors trait anxiety (high trait anxiety vs low trait
anxiety, dummy coded), the individual reappraisal use score, and the
individual IQ score. The factor IQ was added to check the specificity of
the resultant pathways for emotion-related characteristics. There is evidence for a positive correlation between FA and IQ (Schmithorst et al.,
2005). If the delineated microstructure is emotion specific, IQ should not
explain additional variance.
The FA values on the calculated pathways between seed and targets
(dmPFC, dlPFC, vmPFC, and OFC, respectively) served as dependent
variables. Note that because of a priori knowledge of asymmetric hemispheric processing, we calculated hierarchical regressions and set up different hierarchies for both hemispheres. In the left hemisphere, the factor
reappraisal use was expected to explain most of the variance and thus was
the first variable to enter the regression, followed by the factor trait
anxiety and IQ as a third factor. To underline the hypothesis-driven
approach, we also tested the model where trait anxiety was the first factor.
Based on the literature, we expected no effects. In the right hemisphere,
Figure 2. AD, Left, Three-dimensional sagittal and superior views of tracts between amygdala and PFC regions: A, orbitofrontal cortex; B, ventromedial PFC; C, dorsomedial PFC; D, dorsolateral
PFC. Renderings show the normalized number of tracts through each voxel (red). Seed and target regions are displayed in blue. For normalization, each voxel was divided by the amygdalas size. E,
Slices illustrating the tracts localization from medial to lateral. The distance between slices is 5 mm.
Table 2. Significant relationships between trait anxiety, reappraisal use, IQ, and
fractional anisotropy values of pathway microstructure between amygdala and
prefrontal cortex regions
ROI
Model
R2
Cor. R 2
TA
Right dmPFC
TA
TA, R
TA, R, IQ
R
TA
TA, R
TA, R, IQ
R
TA
TA, R
TA, R, IQ
R
TA
TA, R
TA, R, IQ
R
R
R, TA
R, TA, IQ
TA
R
R, TA
R, TA, IQ
TA
R
R, TA
R, TA, IQ
TA
R
R, TA
R, TA, IQ
TA
0.05
0.06
0.06
0.03
0.04
0.06
0.06
0.04
0.12
0.14
0.18
0.07
0.16
0.16
0.17
0.01
0.09
0.11
0.11
0.05
0.11
0.14
0.15
0.08
0.11
0.13
0.14
0.06
0.09
0.11
0.15
0.05
0.03
0.02
0.00
0.01
0.02
0.02
0.00
0.02
0.10
0.10
0.13
0.05
0.14
0.12
0.11
0.01
0.07
0.07
0.05
0.03
0.09
0.10
0.09
0.06
0.09
0.09
0.08
0.04
0.07
0.07
0.09
0.03
2.24
1.41
0.95
1.56
2.10
1.53
1.01
2.06
6.44*
3.73*
3.31*
3.21
8.52**
4.21*
2.92*
0.54
4.74*
2.69
1.87
2.27
5.85*
3.73*
2.52
3.91
5.65*
3.36*
2.29
3.13
4.59*
2.68
2.51
2.44
0.22
0.17
0.18
Right dlPFC
Right vmPFC
Right OFC
Left dmPFC
Left dlPFC
Left vmPFC
Left OFC
0.21
0.16
0.16
0.35*
0.30
0.34*
0.40**
0.41**
0.39*
0.12
0.14
0.22
0.18
0.20
0.28
0.15
0.17
0.25
0.13
0.17
0.22
IQ
0.12
0.12
0.18
0.05
0.15
0.15
0.21
0.02
0.15
0.16
0.26
0.21
0.04
0.04
0.11
0.31*
0.26
0.27
0.08
0.34*
0.27
0.28
0.07
0.33*
0.28
0.28
0.07
0.30*
0.25
0.27
0.20
0.10
Model parameters for each predictor variable for hierarchical regression analyses are shown. Dependent variables
are fractional anisotropy values of pathway microstructure between amygdala and prefrontal cortex regions. ROI,
Region of interest; TA, trait anxiety; R, reappraisal use. *p 0.05; **p 0.01.
Discussion
We investigated the microstructural properties of pathway connections between the amygdala and PFC regions deemed relevant
for anxiety and emotion regulation. The results provide direct
evidence for stronger connectivity between amygdala and
vmPFC and OFC of the right hemisphere in persons with low
trait anxiety. Emotion regulation was expressed as stronger connectivity between amygdala and vmPFC, OFC, dmPFC, and
dlPFC of the left hemisphere in persons with high reappraisal use.
We collected diffusion-weighted images (dMRI) and applied
probabilistic tractography to compute all tracks between
amygdala and PFC regions individually for both hemispheres.
The resulting white matter circuitry included (parts of) the uncinate fasciculus, cingulum, fornix, anterior thalamic radiation,
and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus. Strong connectivity via
the uncinate fasciculus was observed for the pathways to vmPFC
and OFC, which was neither seen in the pathway network to
dlPFC nor to dmPFC. These connections, especially to vmPFC,
fit with findings from dMRI studies on humans and animals
(Croxson et al., 2005; Carlson et al., 2013; Jbabdi et al., 2013) and
with anatomical studies that reported extensive anatomical connections between the amygdala and the PFC. For instance, in rats
and monkeys, it was shown that the amygdala is connected to
prefrontal cortex by direct amygdalo-cortical projections (Nauta,
1961; Krettek and Price, 1974, 1977a), and indirectly via the thalamus (Nauta, 1962; Krettek and Price, 1974, 1977a,b). In rhesus
monkeys, the ventromedial region of PFC receives both direct
and indirect tracts stemming from the amygdala, but the dorsolateral PFC does not get such input (Porrino et al., 1981). These
findings suggested that the ventromedial region may be regarded
as the limbic portion of the frontal association cortex. The
longer, presumably indirect routes found in our study have not
been focused on and rarely have been addressed in human dMRI
studies on emotion processing or anxiety. Reviewing the role of
the PFC in emotion cognition interactions, Ray and Zald (2012)
emphasized that studies on nonhuman primates reveal large variability concerning direct projections between the amygdalae and
regions of the PFC and that direct projections between amygdala
and dlPFC are extremely weak. It may thus be surprising that
we find such strong connections between amygdala and prefrontal regions. However, there is ample evidence for indirect pathways, most notably through the thalamus, in both animals and
humans.
Recent research using tractography in humans provided further evidence for strong connections between hippocampus/
amygdala and thalamus. The amygdala connects with the
anterior thalamus via the fornix and uncinate fasciculus and with
the pulvinar via the temporopulvinar tract (Zarei et al., 2010).
Similarly, Linke et al. (2012) reported indirect pathways from the
amygdala to the OFC, namely via the anterior and posterior thalami. Note that these studies did not specifically target the connection between the amygdala and prefrontal regions.
With multiple hierarchical regressions, we analyzed the relationship of these determined fiber connections with trait anxiety
and reappraisal use by means of hypothesis-driven, hemispherespecific models. Given accumulating evidence for an asymmetric
involvement of the PFC, with a right-hemispheric dominance for
anxiety and anxiety-related processes (Stewart et al., 1988; Hermann et al., 1992; Hellige, 1993; OCarroll et al., 1993; Petruzzello
and Landers, 1994; Lucey et al., 1995; Stapleton et al., 1997; Bremner et al., 1999; Nitschke et al., 1999; Wiedemann et al., 1999;
Davidson et al., 2000; Davidson, 2002; Pizzagalli et al., 2002; Smit
et al., 2007, Harmon-Jones et al., 2010), we expected our structural trait anxiety effects to be particularly visible in the right
hemisphere. Based on evidence for a left-hemispheric lateralization of reappraisal use (Ochsner et al., 2002; Jackson et al., 2003;
Kim and Bell, 2006) and recently observed left-sided biases of
metabolic activity in the superior frontal gyrus in frequent reappraisers (Kim et al., 2012), we expected reappraisal use effects to
be most prominent in the left hemisphere. We set up the hierarchies of the multiple regression analysis accordingly, with trait
anxiety as the first factor in the analyses of the right hemisphere
and with reappraisal use as the first factor for the left hemisphere.
The following methodological details are important to consider. First, we chose a hypothesis-based approach, analyzing the
microstructure of only those tracts to PFC regions that have consistently been associated with emotion-related processes. Different from prior studies, all tracks, including longer pathways
between the two structures, were considered. We calculated the
tracts for subsequent FA analysis on our sample, not relying on
data from thematically different experimental contexts. This is
more conservative than a whole-brain approach, where significant
regions are selected, analyzed, and interpreted post hoc. Second, we
also adopted the hypothesis-based approach in the statistical analysis. As mentioned above, anxiety and use of reappraisal is related to
hemisphere-specific networks. Whereas anxiety is primarily (but not
exclusively) related to processes of right-hemispheric amygdala and
PFC (Reiman et al., 1984; Heller et al., 1995), emotion regulation is
primarily associated with left-hemispheric processing in these
structures (Wheeler et al., 1993; Jackson et al., 2003; Kim and Bell,
2006; Kim et al., 2012). This differential hemispheric involvement in different aspects of emotion processing and regulation
supports the hypotheses by Davidson and colleagues (Davidson
et al., 1987, 1990, 2000; Davidson and Tomarken, 1989; Davidson, 1992, 1995, 2002; Sutton and Davidson, 1997). In low traitanxious persons, there was no higher FA in pathways to the
dorsomedial and the dorsolateral part of the PFC. One reason
might be that the amygdalar inhibition by these PFC regions
operates via general mechanisms, such as changes in the neurotransmitter system. Such mechanisms might not be reflected in
FA values of connecting pathways (Ray and Zald, 2012). An alternative explanation is that our atlas comprised comparably
wide boundaries around the dmPFC and the dlPFC. Although
this was deliberately done as not to miss potentially important
fibers, it could have led to an attenuation of the expected effect.
Some caveats and open questions should be addressed in future studies. First, we probabilistically tracked fiber pathways
from amygdala to PFC within each hemisphere, focusing on noncrossing fibers. However, animal studies have shown that a small
percentage of connecting fibers between the amygdala and the
PFC crosses the corpus callosum (Mascagni et al., 1993; McDonald and Mascagni, 1996). A second caveat concerns the origin of
the calculated fibers within the amygdala. We mapped the
amygdala in each participant and treated the entire amygdala as
seed region. Yet, the amygdala is a heterogeneous structure, with
various substructures and nuclei (Sah et al., 2003), each with
different functions and connections with different areas in the
brain. It is thus a challenge for future DTI studies to differentiate
connections between amygdala substructures and regions of the
PFC. Third, because women are especially prone to develop anxiety disorders (see Somers et al., 2006) and to avoid additional
variance attributable to existing brain-activation differences be-
References
Ackenheil M, Stotz G, Dietz-Bauer R, Vossen A (1999) Deutsche Fassung
des Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview. Munchen: Psychiatrische Universitatsklinik Munchen.
Avants BB, Epstein CL, Grossman M, Gee JC (2008) Symmetric diffeomorphic
image registration with cross-correlation: evaluating automated labeling of
elderly and neurodegenerative brain. Med Image Anal 12:26 41. CrossRef
Medline
Barbas H, Zikopoulos B (2006) Sequential and parallel circuits for emotional processing in primate orbitofrontal cortex. In: The orbitofrontal
cortex (Zald DH, Rauch SL, eds), pp 5791. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Basser PJ, Pierpaoli C (1996) Microstructural and physiological features of
tissues elucidated by quantitative-diffusion-tensor MRI. J Magn Reson
111:209 219.
Baur V, Hanggi J, Langer N, Jancke L (2013a) Resting-state functional and
structural connectivity within an insulaamygdala route specifically index state and trait anxiety. Biol Psychiatry 73:8592. CrossRef Medline
Baur V, Bruhl AB, Herwig U, Eberle T, Rufer M, Delsignore A, Jancke L,
Hanggi J (2013b) Evidence of frontotemporal structural hypoconnectivity in social anxiety disorder: a quantitative fiber tractography study.
Hum Brain Mapp 34:437 446. CrossRef Medline
Behrens TE, Berg HJ, Jbabdi S, Rushworth MF, Woolrich MW (2007) Probabilistic diffusion tractography with multiple fibre orientations: what can
we gain? Neuroimage 34:144 155. CrossRef Medline
Bishop SJ (2007) Neurocognitive mechanisms of anxiety: an integrative account. Trends Cogn Sci 11:307316. CrossRef Medline
Bremner JD, Staib LH, Kaloupek D, Southwick SM, Soufer R, Charney DS
(1999) Neural correlates of exposure to traumatic pictures and sound in
combat veterans with and without posttraumatic stress disorder: a posi-